Tommy Tuberville says Lubbock ‘looked like Iraq’

Ah, Lubbock.

“This is West Texas,” as they say.

Complete with sandstorms, rancid odors on the breeze, and nothing but tabletop-flat plains stretching far to the west.

One Reddit user wonders, “Why does it smell like cow shit?”

A helpful commenter replies, “That would be the cow shit.”

Ah, Lubbock, where breathing through your nose may not be a good idea.

That would be an especially bad idea during one of the haboobs that look like apocalyptic events.

There are fans of the place. And then there are those who don’t much care for the Hub City.

Count former Texas Tech Red Raiders head coach Tommy Tuberville as one of the latter.

“You run me off at Auburn and you ship me to Lubbock, Texas,” Tuberville said Wednesday on the Rick & Bubba show. “I’m going to tell you what, that’s like going to Siberia. Somebody asked me, ‘What’s Lubbock look like?’ It looked like Iraq.”

Having recently been personally unnerved enough by the weird vibe of Lubbock that I got off my intended route in the city despite following my GPS, I can confirm the overall arc of Tuberville’s sentiment here.

In fact, Lubbock is one of the strangest places I’ve ever been — there’s something about the endless stretch of flatness that just really bothers me. Give me the Hill Country of Austin or just about any mountains anywhere, please.

Tuberville did admit that he “loved the people” there, but many Texas fans — and various fans of other schools — might disagree with that.

How do Texas Tech fans act?

Well, they are the type of fans who might find themselves chanting “F—- you, Baker” to former quarterback Baker Mayfield, who justifiably transferred to his dream school after his remarkable freshman season as a walk on in Lubbock.

Now, such behavior hardly represents every Red Raiders fan out there — our own Drew Parker of Viva La Matador wrote a passionate plea after that incident calling for fans to clean up their behavior. Most especially their language.

However, it’s been such a problem that Parker advocated for networks to no longer show Texas Tech football games. And the school itself apologized after the Mayfield incident, which prompted the president to meet with several student groups about changing the culture in Lubbock.

“This does not represent our students, our alumni and our faculty in a way that we want,” president Lawrence Schovanec said at a news conference. “I apologize for the fans that were offended by that behavior. This is a serious matter. This is not the first time that it happened. I can assure we’re not just going to issue a statement, as I have, and drop it.”

Other than the language emanating from the stands that often smells as foul as the city itself, even pom squad members have said in the past that they don’t feel safe down on the field because of the potential for poor fan behavior during or after games.

Having dealt with unruly Texas Tech fans in Austin in the past, fans who used homophobic slurs against me and were still talking trash after a bad loss, my personal experience with Red Raiders in the city where I live has been as unpleasant as my trips through Lubbock.

Is it possible to have a good time in Lubbock? Surely, it is.

It’s just not anywhere that I want to stay long enough to find out if I can or not.

Tommy Tuberville isn’t far off.